Nellie Bly at the table

In Nellie Bly's New York, meals were not structured as entrée-main-dessert but in three parts: a hearty breakfast upon rising, dinner (the hot meal of midday or evening), and a light supper. On top of that came the city that never slept: lunch counters where you ate a dish standing up between two articles, oyster cellars lit by gas under the sidewalks of Manhattan, and the family pantry stocked with preserves from the countryside. A hurried, abundant, democratic cuisine, reflecting a reporter always on the go.

In the late 19th century, the oyster was THE taste of New York: so cheap that millions were served in the popular cellars under the streets. Iodine, salt, and umami — it was the fast food of a city inventing mass journalism, and therefore the food of a journalist like Bly.